BSA IDG (IT) Road Map

[T2Eagle]

This came across my FB feed so I clicked through.  There is a series of videos and some supporting graphics talking about the current state of BSA software and a new direction they're going to take.

 

On the good news side they are pretty open about the extent of the problems and even provide some details about how they were arrived at.

 

The plan seems plausible.

 

They actually have a plan for a plan to enlist volunteer help.

 

On the downside, they dressed the Chief Scout Exec as almost a parody of a computer nerd: pocket protector full of pens and pencils, and his tie held up with a paper clip.  I hate being conned, if he's ever spent a day at work dressed like that I'll double my FOS contribution.  The IT guys I know don't have pocket protectors and almost don't use writing tools at all anymore.

 

Forum members, take a look at the videos and see what you think.

[RememberSchiff]

http://itroadmap.scouting.org/videos/

[qwazse]

Thanks. Writing a note as we speak.

... On the downside, they dressed the Chief Scout Exec as almost a parody of a computer nerd: pocket protector full of pens and pencils, and his tie held up with a paper clip.  I hate being conned, if he's ever spent a day at work dressed like that I'll double my FOS contribution.  The IT guys I know don't have pocket protectors and almost don't use writing tools at all anymore.

 

Forum members, take a look at the videos and see what you think.

I've seen a lot of folks drift off of the Google satellite complex (among others) for their coffee-house meetings (which by the way are really neat to overhear, if a tenth of it is true, there's some spiffy stuff coming down the pike). I have never met a one in a Nascar racing team shirt. Usually one pen/mechanical pencil at a time. Sometimes none. (You can always borrow the barista's. Write on a napkin, then photograph it.)

 

And when he was our SE, I only saw him in the blue blazer or venturing green. So, it's likely your FOS will have to gamble with some other scouter.

[RememberSchiff]

Surbaugh makes the point that there was confusion who the IT customers were. I think that confusion still remains in this roadmap.

 

Where are we going with this?

     - Mobile devices? seems only iOS. Is National mandating internet access at camps and other venues and providing smartphones to staff?

     - Easier? Why haven't we been asked what would make life easier. Where are the requirements docs FROM different users? Are we trading too much paperwork or even more computerwork? Shades of Troopmaster! Seems everyone National, Council, Advancement Chairman, SM, PL, scout, and his parents are tracking a scout's advancement. Why?

     - Priorities?

     - Budget? How about spending less money and downsizing IT as an upfront goal?

 

The larger problem are existing BSA business rules and policies.

     - Centralized control of data and resources? Do we have to go through National to register for council camp?

     - Multiple position/unit registrations for a single member should go bye-bye. A volunteer registers just once with BSA.

     - Rechartering should be streamlined.

     - What is Council role down this new road? ("Ability to update the most recent approved merit badge counselor list" - now that was funny)

     - What information do we need to track? Seems National want to track ALL information. Do I/we need service hours or advancement tracked nationally?

     - Who to contact? Problem tracking visible to all users? Follow-through. Ever report a software problem to National? How did that go? Actually this should be the first problem to fix.

     - Open BSA websites to search engines?

Software will not be simple and intuitive unless the underlying business rules are!

 

Identify customers, gather their needs, CHANGE the BSA business rules accordingly, prioritize, develop transition plans including costs (all costs - software, development, support, training, hardware), what is budget, test, fix, phased rollout, SUPPORT.

 

My $0.01 for rambling.

Edited August 29, 2016 by RememberSchiff

[jjlash]

@@RememberSchiff hits on the thing I think is the biggest issue: they need to decide who the customer really is. HINT: there is more than one.

 

I realize that computer/online tools for Scouts (advancement, outings, service hours) is an easy sell - and there is value in this.  But from my perspective, the adult volunteers are the big underserved customer and there is some real low hanging fruit here.  How about absolutely anything to that will automate JTE.  There is no reason that volunteers should spend their time manually calculating percentages for data that is already in the computer system.  And that assumes they can get even the data out of the system.

 

<rant>

My current frustration is with the district JTE goal of increasing the number of trained direct contact leaders.  The only way we have found to even determine how many direct contact leaders we have, is to examine the 172 page PDF that lists the trained status for all leaders organized by unit.  Our registrar and our professional responsible for training have not found a way to get this info in another format (e.g. a spreadsheet) that can be sorted/filtered.  Maybe it doesnt exist, maybe they just have not found it - result is the same for me.

</rant>

 

IMO there is a risk here - most volunteers are here to serve the youth.  As they are continually asked to do more administrative stuff and are not given reasonable tools to accomplish those tasks, they will choose to serve the youth in other ways.  Maybe they will simply not do the administrative stuff or maybe they will choose other organizations to support with their time.  I know those thoughts have crossed my mind on more than one occasion.

[skeptic]

Found it encouraging, but still too early to judge.  Are they going to force Scoutbook on us?  If so, do we get it free at a basic level with registration?  And if so, does that mean they will up the cost again?

 

Are they finally going to find a way to keep one ID for a volunteer or youth member?  Once assigned, there seems to be no reason that ID would not simply stay with you, even when you become an adult.  Surely would make tracking older records easier.  And, like we have one person on our charter that chooses to stay there, even though moved and is active elsewhere.  She has to register twice, and sends me verification of YP in the other council.  

 

Have asked for feedback from one of our local Tech savvy leaders, who also is on the regional level.  

 

But, hopefully moving the right way?

[Eagle94-A1]

 

Are they finally going to find a way to keep one ID for a volunteer or youth member?  Once assigned, there seems to be no reason that ID would not simply stay with you, even when you become an adult.  Surely would make tracking older records easier.  And, like we have one person on our charter that chooses to stay there, even though moved and is active elsewhere.  She has to register twice, and sends me verification of YP in the other council.  

 

 

I've been waiting for that to occur for 18 years now, ever since the then SCOUTNET 2000 Director told a bunched brand new DEs that that would be happening.

[fred johnson]

Okay.   I'm hijacking the thread topic for a minute.   

 

IT issue.  Very basic.  That really really really really upset me today.

 

Why did BSA SEA BASE email an invoice that I need to give to the treasurer where the invoice shows MY PASSWORD !!!!!!!   That is extremely unprofessional and extremely bad.  

 

I want to submit BSA SEA BASE to a web site that reflects unsecured web sites.  

 

#1  They should not be able to recover my password.  

#2  They should not put my password on paperwork for everyone to see !!!!!!

#3  They should not put my login username on paperwork for everyone to see !!!!!!

Edited August 29, 2016 by fred johnson

[5yearscouter]

I got an email from the council advancement guy today that said National is working on making Scoutbook talk to internet advancement directly so what you see on the scoutbook app is what Scoutnet has for your scouts. 

 

That the IT dept decided it needed to be approached differently, so the process was going to be postponed by a few months.

But that when you enter anything into Scoutnet it will show on internet advancement automatically/immediately.

 

My question, where are the checks and balances here? Like for advancing a rank you are going to need to have SM and at least 3 people on a BOR actually approve the rank ON SCOUTBOOK for it to go thru? Or will there be one person who actually makes it go thru (like current Adv Chair?)

 

And have they fixed it so that ONE email address can sign up for scoutbook for everyone in a family? Cause we don't use Scoutbook cause that was what we were told, that each person had to have a different email address, and we have families where ALL emails ONLY go thru one email address to mom or dad only.

[Torchwood]

Yeah, I think we will stick with Troopmaster. When a Scout is approaching Eagle, our Troop Advancement Chair checks our Troopmaster report against ScoutNet to make sure that no balls were dropped. Only the Troop Key3 have access to Troopmaster, and only the Adv Chair has full access. I and the CC only have read-only access so that we can't accidentally change something, and on close the database file is backed up locally with a dated file, so we can always look back if there is ever an issue. Based on my experiences with anything related to BSA IT, it makes no sense to have a single point of failure with all that data.

[fred johnson]

We use ScoutBook to view ScoutNet data.  Every few months we sync the data and it shows every scout's advancement.  It's extremely useful.